- Letter from the Editors
- Sponsor Messages:
- Get ready for the 2008 election, New York poets!
- "Rise Up and Hear: An Evening of Poetry Honoring Abraham Lincoln's Legacy"
- Kenyon Review Resources for Teachers
- Ellipsis: Submission deadline
- Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference
- Tupelo Press $10,000 Dorset Prize
- Conduit
- Shenandoah 58/2, Fall, 2008
- More....
- Poetry news links
- Selected new arrivals
- This week’s featured poets
- Last week’s featured poets
- Last year’s featured poets
- Two poems
1. Letter from the Editors
Dear Readers,
We're pleased to present as a special feature this week a poem by the Jennifer Perrine, of Des Moines, IA, the winner of the “Taste ‘Test” contest, sponsored by the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
On Tuesday we continue our series of prose features with Clive James's "Little Low Heavens," from the September issue of Poetry:
"Any poem that does not just slide past us like all those thousands of others usually has an ignition point for our attention. To take the most startling possible example, think of "Spring," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Everyone knows the first line because everyone knows the poem. "Nothing is so beautiful as Spring" is a line that hundreds of poets could have written, and was probably designed to sound that way: designed, that is, to be merely unexceptionable, or even flat. Only two lines further on, however, we get "Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens" and we are electrified.... I wonder if there can be any successful poem, even the one disguised as an unadorned prose argument, which is not dependent on this ability to project you into a reality so drastically rearranged that it makes your hair fizz even when it looks exactly like itself."
Look for it on Tuesday on our news page.
We hope you enjoy this week's poems!
Warmest regards,
Don Selby & Diane Boller
Editors
Get ready for the 2008 election, New York poets!
Study poetry and literature at New York’s 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center. Get ready for the 2008 election with Joshua Mehigan’s Political Poetry seminar/workshop (class begins Oct 5). Revisit some of your favorite classics with poet and essayist Ben Downing’s British Country-House Novels seminar (class begins Oct 6). To register, call 212-415-5500 or visit us online. 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, NYC.
"Rise Up and Hear: An Evening of Poetry Honoring Abraham Lincoln's Legacy"
2008 National Poetry Out Loud Champ Shawntay Henry will join poets Robert Pinsky, Kevin Young, and actors Joan Allen and Sam Waterson for "Rise Up and Hear: An Evening of Poetry Honoring Abraham Lincoln's Legacy," September 22 in Washington, DC. For more information and to reserve seats, visit the Lincoln Bicentennial Web site ....
Kenyon Review Resources for Teachers
The Kenyon Review is happy to announce a new feature of its website, "Resources for Teachers." Offering teaching suggestions on legendary KR material, as well as current work from the magazine, look for this feature to add new resources in the coming months and weeks.
Ellipsis: Submission deadline
Ellipsis is a literature and art journal published each April by the students of Westminster College in Salt Lake City (since 1967). Contributors are paid for their work and eligible for a prize judged this year by poet Kurt Brown. We publish well known writers, up-and-coming writers, and never-before-published writers. Submission deadline: November 1, 2008.
Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference
For Poets With a Book-Length Manuscript: first conference to provide the faculty, connections, and method necessary to set poets with a completed or in-process manuscript on a path towards publication.
Faculty includes editors and publishers Jeffrey Levine (Tupelo Press), Martha Rhodes (Four Way Books), Jeffrey Shotts (Graywolf Press), Susan Kan (Perugia Press), Peter Conners (BOA) and others; workshop leaders include Joan Houlihan (Concord Poetry Center); Frederick Marchant (Suffolk University), Ellen Doré Watson (Smith College), Steven Cramer (Lesley University), Daniel Tobin (Emerson College) and others.
Tupelo Press $10,000 Dorset Prize
Tupelo Press $10,000 Dorset Prize: submissions accepted through December 15, 2008 (postmark)
Judge Ilya Kaminsky. Full guidelines online ....
Conduit
Conduit is a biannual literary journal that is at once direct, playful, inventive, irreverent, and darkly beautiful. Really, it is. Conduit publishes work that demonstrates originality, intelligence, courage, and humanity. If that isn't enough, Conduit reaches beyond the literary by interviewing astronomers, ethno-botanists, artists, musicians, and historians, et cetera, believing a vigorous imagination is one that is cross-pollinated by diverse areas of human inquiry.
Shenandoah 58/2, Fall, 2008
"Atlantic Flyway to Whirl is King: An Interview with Brendan Galvin" and six new Galvin poems plus poems by Thomas Reiter, Paula Brady, David Wagoner, James Arthur, Erika Meitner, Megan Ronan, Michael Jenkins, Stephen Gibson, William Aarnes, Jake Willard-Crist, Alice Friman, Cori Winrock, Mary Oliver, Jeff Hoffman and Jeanne Murray Walker. Visit Shenandoah ...
The Bennington Graduate Writing Seminars
Founded in 1994 by poet Liam Rector, building on the long-standing literary tradition of Bennington College (Bernard Malamud, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, and Theodore Roethke all taught there at one time) the Bennington Writing Seminars was named "one of the top 5 low-residency MFA programs in the country" in 2007 by The Atlantic Monthly. Students work closely with four Core Faculty instructors over as many terms and attend five 10-day residencies, held on Bennington College’s Vermont campus, in January and June. A reading-intensive program that confers an MFA degree in Writing and Literature, our informal motto is: "Read one hundred books. Write one."
Palm Beach Poetry Festival: Workshop Signup
Palm Beach Poetry Festival, January 19-24, 2009, Old School Square, Delray Beach, FL. Advanced Workshops ($725): Martin Espada, Kimiko Hahn, Laura Kasischke, Thomas Lux, Anne Marie Macari, Gregory Orr and Gerald Stern; Intermediate Workshops: ($525) Denise Duhamel and Victoria Redel. Workshops, limited to 12 poets, include conference, readings and gala party. Visit us online for application and guidelines or phone Call (561) 868-2063. Application deadline: October 31, 2008.
Sanibel Island Writers Conference 2008
November 6-9, 2008, Sanibel Island, FL. Workshops & panels in fiction, memoir, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, songwriting, and children's lit ($350). Lynne Barrett, Eve Bridburg, Jim Brock, Ron Carlson, Camille Cline, John Dufresne, Beth Ann Fennelly, William Giraldi, Stephanie Griest, Jeanne Leiby, John McNally, Leonard Nash, Sena Jeter Naslund, Neal Pollack, John K. Samson, Christopher Schelling, Michael Steinberg, Ian Vasquez. Visit us online for registration info, or call (239) 590-7421.
Academy of American Poets: 2008 Poets Forum
Join the Academy of American Poets in New York, Nov. 6–8, for the 2008 Poets Forum, a 3-day exploration of contemporary poetry in America. Events include discussion sessions with distinguished poets, readings, literary walking tours of New York City, and more. Participants include Frank Bidart,Victor Hernández Cruz, Louise Glück, Lyn Hejinian, Sharon Olds, Ron Padgett, Robert Pinsky, U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, Gary Snyder, and others. Purchase tickets online ....
News and reviews from around the web, updated daily:
- Paul Wilner reviews the Letters of Allen Ginsberg, edited by Bill Morgan. (San Francisco Chronicle)
- Mary Karr eulogizes David Foster Wallace with poetry by John Berryman, Heather McHugh and Weldon Kees. (The Washington Post)
- James Campbell interviews the Alastair Reid. (Guardian)
- Adam Newey reviews Song and Dance by John Fuller. (Guardian)
- Simon Armitage's Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid reviewed by Jenna Krajeski. (San Francisco Chronicle)
- David Wagoner's A Map of the Night reviewed by Sheila Farr. (Seattle Times)
- Outgoing British Poet Laureate Andrew Motion is not the only one who chafed in the post. (Telegraph)
- Ted Kooser introduces a poem by Kaelum Poulson. (American Life in Poetry)
- And more....
These and other new arrivals are available for purchase via Poetry Daily/Amazon.com.
- On Purpose, Nick Laird (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)
- The Alphabet, Ron Silliman (University of Alabama Press)
- Even Now, Susanna Lang (Backwaters Press)
- The Luck of Being, Wendell Hawken (Backwaters Press)
- The Language of Rain and Wind, John Krumberger (Backwaters Press)
- Exchanging Lives, Damon McLaughlin (Backwaters Press)
- One Secret Thing, Sharon Olds (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Dismantling the Hills, Michael McGriff (University of Pittsburgh Press)
- Lyric Powers, Robert von Hallberg (University of Chicago Press)
- Restoration, Christina Pugh (TriQuarterly Books)
- Ardor, Karen An-hwei Lee (Tupelo Press)
- Wild Goods, Denise Newman (Apogee Press)
- Four Letter Words, Truong Tran (Apogee Press)
- The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays, Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
- And more...
Monday - Euripides / tr. Robin Robertson
Tuesday - Janet Frame
Wednesday - Dennis O'Driscoll
Thursday - Linda Bierds
Friday - Mark Halliday
Saturday - Kevin Young
Sunday - Peter Cole
6. Featured Poets September 15 - September 21, 2008
These and other past featured poets may be found in our archive:
Monday - John Kinsella
Tuesday - W. S. Merwin
Wednesday - Clive James
Thursday - Anne Marie Macari
Friday - Oni Buchanan
Saturday - David Huerta / tr. Mark Schafer
Sunday - Ta-hui / tr. Stephen Berg
These poems will be retired from our archive during the coming week.
Paul Guest - "Lullaby"
Marvin Bell - "Mars Being Red"
John Hewitt - "Landscape" and "The Search"
Mary Kinzie - "Looking Forth"
Noah Eli Gordon - "Novel Pictorial Noise 1–5"
Mark Strand - "The Continuous Life"
Gabriel Spera - "Masterful"
Masterful
Though it's a city job, Carlos isn't wearing
his orange vest and yellow hardhat,
but clomps around in tan ranchero hat
and washed-out denim shirt. The foreman
warns him once again, as he must, and Carlos
swears he won't forget again tomorrow.
He straps himself in to the motor grader,
skims a glove across the fat black knobs,
and eases forth with a mule-driver's patience,
leveling truck-dumped piles of raw fill
smoother than the sea of Cortez.
Maybe it's a gift, such effortless grace,
such seamless union of man and machine,
and maybe it's a sign how every morning,
punctual as the lunch truck with its
shave-and-a-haircut horn, he kills the engine,
clambers down, struts up close to a massive
chevron-treaded tire and just starts peeing,
as though the whole site weren't naked
as a soccer field, boxed along three sides
by green glass towers. Not that it matters—
the soil he darkens will be asphalted over
soon enough, and even now, here comes
the water-tank truck, spewing like a fire plug
wrenched open in the mid-city heat.
Small hot-pink pennants still mark
the heavy conduit we sank just yesterday,
and we've got planks on edge, framing
where the walkway's going to be.
The cement mixer inches up, its great drum
putting like a clock hand teasing toward the hour.
And Hector levers the crusty sluice above
the ready beds, the newsprint-colored mortar
plopping like horseshit to the ground.
And Manny makes quick work of it, his trowel
and squeegee broom drawing it so tight,
a dropped dime would roll to a standing stop
and never topple over. There is a thin line
between miracle and mastery. Even
Carlos stands, hat off with the rest of us,
nodding as with subtle understanding.
Gabriel Spera
Cimarron Review
Summer 2007
Copyright ©2007 by The Board of Regents
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
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